MTV and NPR love the SWEDISH INVASION!

May 21, 2010

If you can get cultural institutions as far apart as MTV and NPR to agree on something, it seems fair to say you've got something special on your hands. And they're both raving about The Top Shelf Swedish Invasion!

Recently the NPR home page sported this enthusiastic review by Glen Weldon of Kolbeinn Karlsson's The Troll King, by far the most wild and creative of our Swedish Invasion graphic novels. In Weldon's opinion, the book "throbs with a sort of primal, allusive, pre-verbal power," which makes it "uncannily beautiful yet defiantly unpretty." Despite the diversity of different segments that make up The Troll King, Kolbeinn's passion and creativity make the whole thing feel unified, he argues. "Karlsson's ability to tap into the mysterious and willful emotional logic of dreams ensures that everything about The Troll King feels at once unexpected and inevitable."

And now MTV's Rick Marshall follows that with a fond look at all four graphic novels in the Swedish Invasion! He has especially high praise for The 120 Days of Simon by Simon Gärdenfors, whose cartoony art is "a perfect fit for the story, taking the edge off some stories and making the whole thing seem more like a crazy adventure and less like a confessional." He also particularly liked Mats Jonsson's Hey Princess, "a great coming-of-age story that should resonate with any indie-minded readers familiar with mid-'90s culture."